[OSM-talk-be] Path vs Footpath (sorry for opening the pandora box)

Fri Feb 19 14:06:06 UTC 2021

First, I would certainly not break a good work - even if I disagree - like you did here for example: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/50.4822/4.9482 <https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/50.4822/4.9482>. That’s clearly a work done with precision and evidently the tags are used consistently.

That said,  I’m currently checking / correcting all the uses of the footway tag outside urbanised areas in the Haute-Meuse region (from Givet to Namur) and in 99,99% of cases, at least from the consistency point of view, it was an error of the mapper, mostly influenced by politics (mapper that wants to emphasis the pedestrian character of a vicinal path) or simply by mistake or ignorance.

Actually I don’t really care about the use of the footway tag like you did IF and only IF it is consistent all over OSM and that there is a consensus about that use. As far as I can see your way of doing things is an isolated case.

I really believe that there is a misunderstanding in the definition of the word itself. Have a look at that query of  google Images <https://www.google.com/search?q=footway&client=safari&hl=fr&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjl4pmUgfbuAhVMwKQKHXTgDnQQ_AUoAnoECAgQBA&biw=1280&bih=642> on the word footway. Even if those footways can be unpaved (clay for example), all of the pictures refers to urbanised places. The word footway refers to “trottoirs” or “voetpad” much more than “sentier” or “pad”.

Therefore, with all due respect to your work, I believe that you’re wrong 😊 It might be considered as mapping for the renderer since default OSM maps don’t really make the difference between a “normal” path and a path tagged as narrow or difficult. But even if your approach could make sense, the use of that footway tag is wrong for me. Other renderers are perfectly using the trail_difficulty and trail_visibility tags that are made for such use.

On the screen capure of opentopomap <https://opentopomap.org/#map=16/50.31757/4.82489> below, the green arrow shows a “normal” path, where the red one shows a difficult path I mapped recently. It works !

Again and finally : for the immense majority of the people, a “footway" is a safe place to walk. Definitively not an alpine path.

Matthieu

> On 18 Feb 2021, at 13:32, Francois Gerin <francois.gerin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I faced the same question a while ago. I also realized the lack of consensus, but also the good reason for the lack of consensus: the problem is not that simple, and there are different points of view, sometime very opposite, but also with a good common base.
> 
> First, for years I didn't changed the map when already mapped. And I mapped "like the area around" to be consistent. But then I became more active and started to refresh and map not-yet-covered areas in my region. Mainly woods and forest, where less mappers work and because there was a clear need.
> => Quickly I realized that it was really important to map "appropriately" in such areas. And, just for the confirmation, I encountered several times people lost, sometime with babies and bikes in quite dangerous areas. (That happened many times in the forest of Marche-les-Dames, that a full refreshed recently.)
> 
> I ended with this "simple" approach, which is also the best "consensus" (for myself) from the different definitions, remarks, wiki pages, and compatible with forest use:
> 
> - Everything is mostly a path, except if it is a track or a footway.
> 
> - A track is where a 4-wheels vehicle, more specifically a forestry tractor, can (if traces on the ground) or is used to pass. (Distinction made so that a path does not become a track just because a quad can pass!)
> 
> - A footway is definitely useful: this is a path too small for horses and mountain bikes. (By mountain bikers, I mean "standard people", aka end users, not pro mountain bikers who can pass nearly everywhere a pedestrian passes!) That definitely correspond to what bikers call "singles": a very small track, where two bikes cannot pass side by side.
> 
> 
> 
> When I reached that approach, I read again the different points of view, remarks, wiki, to conclude that it was respecting quite well most of the points considered important. And, for me, it also satisfied the need to make that distinction, which is important on site. (cf. lost people, dangerous situations)
> 
> Note that even if I'm a biker, I force myself to consider OSM for the "end user". With the distinction I make for a "standard end user": Consider the map like a family getting out for a walk on the Sunday... Neither for a pro mountain biker, nor a horse driver. Even if those categories probably benefit the most from the distinction.
> 
> My 2 cents.
> 
> ++
> François
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 18/02/21 12:49, Pieter Vander Vennet wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>> 
>> Sorry to send a second email just after my first, but while doing some more research, I found that this controversy is already pretty old; see:
>> 
>> https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Richard/diary/20333 <https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Richard/diary/20333>
>> and 
>> 
>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Path_controversy <https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Path_controversy>
>> 
>> Kind regards,
>> Pieter
>> 
>> On 18.02.21 12:34, Pieter Vander Vennet wrote:
>>> Hi Matthieu,
>>> 
>>> Welcome in the swampy fields of tagging discussions ;)
>>> 
>>> My view
>>> 
>>> First of all, we do professional routeplanning, for both cyclists and pedestrians. And yes, I do (mostly) agree with your view: a path is a small, unpaved (desire) path, e.g. through a forest whereas a footway is IMHO a typical paved (or planned) road of at least 0.5m wide. A rule of thumb that I use is that a wheelchair/stroller could pass easily, or as Gerard said earlier: "it is like a sidewalk, but just not next to a road"
>>> 
>>> If the "footway" is sufficiently wide that a car could drive over it (but is not allowed to), I'm inclined to mark them as highway=pedestrian. This is useful information, as e.g. emergency services might take it during an intervention to get close to the location of the accident.
>>> 
>>> I'm also inclined to mark a wide, planned way (e.g. in parks) as footways too.
>>> 
>>> I try to base my road classification mostly on physical aspects: a path stays a path, even if it suddenly has a name board. This is because of my view from routeplanning: in general, I assume that that a footway is accessible to a wheelchair user, whereas a path is not. To explicitly add the vicinal road status, there are some tags for that (vicinal_road:ref IIRC?). This is the only place where I disagree with you:
>>> 
>>> > The only exception I see is a path in the country side that is explicitly marked (road signs) as pedestrian only, and/or has turnstiles or other gates to keep other users away.
>>> 
>>> I would still mark those as a `highway=path`, with an additional `bicycle=no` and map the turnstiles/kissing gates explicitly. The data consumer can then decide what to do.
>>> 
>>> Note however that not everyone agrees with my vision and that I'm not always consistent too - I mapped a very peculiar case <https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/107877794> yesterday that by my objective criteria should be a 'path', but that I mapped as footways due to their context as that felt more appropriate - but that place <https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/126568080> has given me more tagging questions too...
>>> 
>>> At last, some people say that "a footway needs a traffic sign to be a footway" or "a cycle path needs a traffic sign to be a cyclepath". That is a view I vehemently reject - not every qualitive footway has a traffic sign nor has every traffic sign a qualitative footway - although a traffic sign can help in making these decisions.
>>> 
>>> Also abusing `highway=path` for shared infrastructure cycle/pedestrian infrastructure is something I loathe: it erases a lot of information and is an effective downgrade of the relevant ways from a routeplanning perspective, as we have to assume the way is a desire path (small, unpaved); not accessible to e.g. wheelchairs, strollers and rollerskate, instead of the very accessible nicely paved, wide footway. To be able to replicate all the information for this downgrade, we would need `surface=*`, `width=*`, `smoothness=*` and maybe even `wheelchair=*` to be sure it is a highly qualitative footway and quite a bit of tricky and inexact preprocessing. However, I do not have a perfect solution for the shared footways/cycleways as well - but marking as path is definitively worse.
>>> So, Marc_marc: I'm sorry, but I do not agree with you and some of the wiki definitions! But that is fine - a disagreement is often due to a different perspective or some missing information. And OSM won't fail over a bit of disagreement ;)
>>>  
>>> Some history
>>> 
>>> Apart from my vision, it is also important to know that OpenStreetMap started in the UK, where there are plenty of vicinal roads. I think those where historically mapped as highway=footway too, but I'm not sure of that. Furthermore, as Gerard nicely stated earlier, it is a common translation error.
>>> 
>>> Furhtermore, the iD editor used to "upgrade" tags: a `highway=footway + bicycle=yes` and `highway=cycleway + foot=yes` got upgraded to `highway=path; bicycle=yes; foot=yes`.  As the iD editor is widely used, there are quite some footways downgraded now...
>>> 
>>> Kind regards,
>>> Pieter
>>> 
>>> On 18.02.21 10:27, Matthieu Gaillet wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>> 
>>>> I would like to know if there is some kind of consensus in Belgium regarding the use of <footway> and <path> tags.
>>>> 
>>>> My intuitive interpretation in the following : 
>>>> a footway, generally speaking, is anything that is specifically created for pedestrians in urbanised areas.
>>>> a path, is generally speaking anything that is not a track (thus not for 4 wheeled vehicles) and not (as well) paved like a footway.
>>>> I know there are other much more loose interpretations that say that a footway might be a non-paved path, but my question is : why would one tag them differently than others ? After all, a path is not suitable for anything else than pedestrian use (except sometimes bikes) ? On the contrary, footways in urbanised places *are* special and it makes sense to map them differently.
>>>> 
>>>> I observe that some mappers are using the footway tags for paths in forests or fields in the middle of nowhere. Those are often “sentiers communaux” (public paths) mapped by balnam affiliates.  Its driving me nuts 😊  
>>>>  
>>>> - most of the time this difference in the way those paths are mapped doesn’t reflect any physical nor practical reality on the field. 
>>>> - this creates vagueness and looseness, I see “normal” paths suddenly showed as “special” on maps without any clear reason. 
>>>> - some could argument that the path tag is not detailed enough. That’s not true : it can be (and is) combined with a lot of other tags to qualify it from multiple point of views and renderers are already taking care of them. This is *not* the case of the footway which is (logically) kind of monolithic.
>>>> 
>>>> The only exception I see is a path in the country side that is explicitly marked (road signs) as pedestrian only, and/or has turnstiles or other gates to keep other users away.
>>>> 
>>>> Do you generally agree with my way of seeing things ? Is it at least the general way of doing things in Belgium ? Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Matthieu
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Talk-be mailing list
>>>> Talk-be at openstreetmap.org <mailto:Talk-be at openstreetmap.org>
>>>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-be <https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-be>
>>> -- 
>>> Met vriendelijke groeten,
>>> Pieter Vander Vennet
>> -- 
>> Met vriendelijke groeten,
>> Pieter Vander Vennet
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Talk-be mailing list
>> Talk-be at openstreetmap.org <mailto:Talk-be at openstreetmap.org>
>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-be <https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-be>
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-be mailing list
> Talk-be at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-be

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-be/attachments/20210219/f3b9e6d6/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Screenshot 2021-02-19 at 14.57.05.png
Type: image/png
Size: 199692 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-be/attachments/20210219/f3b9e6d6/attachment-0001.png>